


Red Queen

by Fluffyllama (Llama)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dark, Dubious Consent, F/F, HP: EWE, Post-War, Prison, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-26
Updated: 2011-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-27 12:58:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llama/pseuds/Fluffyllama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With every crunch of bone, Pansy falls a little more in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Queen

**Author's Note:**

> Written for HP_Darkfest for the prompt: 'If she can't be happy, she will make sure no one else can either.' Please note I've marked it as 'dubious consent' based on what actually takes place in the story, but there are hints of and references to non-con given the setting.

The first time Pansy sees her, the new arrival is only wearing a towel and a pair of scuffed boots.

Most of the women are backed up against the walls out of the glare of the harsh fluorescent lights. They're not even pretending to clean their teeth or take a shower any more, not when there's the scent of drama in the air.

That and fresh meat. There's no question what's going to go down here. The only question is how messy it's going to be.

Pansy can't take her eyes off those incongruous boots.

"You're with me," Maggie says to the newcomer, stepping forward and looking her up and down. "You can move your stuff out of my cell today, Parkinson."

"What?" Pansy can feel her neighbours shrink back from her, and the light is as bright and hot in her eyes as she remembers it being on her first day. "But I—."

"Don't worry, you'll still be one of my girls," Maggie leers back at her. "I just never had a redhead before." A ripple of jeers and titters echoes around the shower room. "Or a _celebrity_."

Pansy sees Ginny tense, knows what's coming, tries to stop it happening. It's just a reflex, never mind Maggie's betrayal. It's been her role -- one of them -- for three years, and habits are hard to break. Thirty seven months and fourteen days, to be exact, at the beck and call of Mad Maggie McGuire, top dog of New Azkaban. It only took one of those days for Pansy to learn to jump when Maggie snapped her fingers. One day and both hands in bandages; Maggie's minders knew how to snap fingers too.

She grabs for the arm that shoots out just a little too late. By the time her hand closes on empty air Maggie's on the floor with Ginny's foot on her neck.

"Life's full of disappointments," Ginny says, and stamps her boot down hard.

**

"I thought—" Pansy gasps later, Ginny's fingers twisting deep inside her, taking possession. "I thought you said it was an accident, what you did. When you killed -- when you killed him." She strains against the strip of torn bath towel holding her wrists to the hot water pipe and wriggles her hips to get that thumb right… god yes, right there.

Ginny pushes down hard onto Pansy's neck, forcing her cheek against the white tiles that still hold a faint wet sheen of pink. The showers will have washed Maggie's blood away by tomorrow, but not the glorious stain on Ginny's soul. Pansy can almost taste it.

Pansy feels the weight on her neck ease up, but if anything it's worse this way. The hand is still, as if measuring, assessing how much pressure, applied just there, it will take to make it snap.

Ginny's breath is hot against her ear. "Don't believe everything you hear."

**

The investigation into Maggie's death goes nowhere, of course. Nobody's going to talk, and the spells around the prison keep everyone's magic in check. Those who take a job in a dismal place like this are hardly the best and brightest the Wizarding world has to offer.

"You were once, though," Pansy says when Ginny points this out. She wedges Ginny's foot between her thighs and rubs a polishing cloth over the boot. Ginny's boots see a lot of use for a woman who doesn't go anywhere, but they're always clean and polished these days.

"And look at me now." Pansy does, because there's no hardship in that, but not for long. There's still a smear on the leather, and she needs to remove it before Ginny has had enough.

"Stop that," Ginny says, but she doesn't pull her foot away. "Make me some tea."

"No."

Ginny digs her heel into Pansy's crotch, pushing hard. "You're the only one who isn't scared of me." She pushes again and Pansy can't help the moan that escapes. "You think I won't hurt you because we're fucking?"

Pansy leans back against the wall and lets her legs fall apart. The boot is slippery and hard under her fingertips, rough and demanding between her thighs.

"Don't forget the boot polishing." Both her hands cradle it now, guiding it so the ridged sole hits the right spots.

"You're such a slut, Parkinson," Ginny says, but there's no malice in it for once. "And you're the one who cares about the boots, not me."

Pansy doesn't say: But you never take them off. She doesn't say: But you sleep in them, shower in them, fuck me in them. She doesn't say: You don't let me clean them for hours every day out of the goodness of your tainted little heart, Weas -- _Potter_.

She knows why the boots are important for Ginny, and she knows that Ginny knows she knows. There's only one reason why she'd be unable to part with them. They don't have to talk about it.

Ginny couldn't hurt her with these boots; Pansy would treasure every bruise, every broken bone. She could die happily enough under them, knowing _his_ scrawny little neck snapped under them too.

Pansy doesn't mean to say anything, but—"Did Potter know what you were capable of before he married you?" comes out before she can stop it.

The response is not what she expects.

"Marriage," Ginny says thoughtfully. "Interesting idea."

**

Pansy's hands and fingers ache of old breaks when winter comes around, and she shivers her way through every night. Ginny uses her own special brand of persuasion to convince Holly Anstruther that she won't be needing her fur-lined gloves any time soon, and even acquires a hot water bottle from someone in D block who trembles now every time she sees red hair.

Maggie's former second, Lucinda, never slow to spot an opportunity, offers up an extra blanket of her own free will. She's not quick enough for Ginny's tastes, however -- the new queen doesn't play by the old rules.

With every crunch of bone, Pansy falls a little more in love.

It's visiting day, Christmas Eve, when Pansy knows Ginny is hers. Only Arthur sits at the sad little Formica table opposite Ginny, though it's one more than has turned out for Pansy in a long time, and the seat opposite her is predictably empty. There are looks and whispers today from all around, more than ever before, and Pansy doesn't know why until she sees the headline on Arthur's crumpled copy of the Daily Prophet.

  
**POTTER WIFE CONFESSES TO PRISON LOVER: HARRY'S DEATH WAS NO ACCIDENT**   


"Why did you say that, love?" Arthur asks, his voice as bleak as his face. "It's not true, I know you didn't--"

"I didn't do any interviews," Ginny says, but she looks thoughtful. Pansy watches the relief dawn over Arthur Weasley's pinched face. "It's just gossip."

"Of course, love," Arthur says, and Pansy is slightly disappointed to see him smile at his daughter. "And I knew it wasn't true that you were—well, _involved_ with someone here.

Ginny smiles too then, but it's a cold, hard curve of her lips that makes Arthur flinch and Pansy want to nibble on them until Ginny bites her back. "I didn't say it wasn't true," she says. "Any of it."

"Pansy?" Pansy jumps when Ginny beckons her over, and she isn't sure if it's her or Arthur Weasley who is more surprised when Ginny pulls her down onto her lap right there in the visiting room and kisses her. It's weird, mostly; Ginny's displays of affection usually come with more blood and less tenderness.

"I'd like you to be the first to know, Dad," Ginny says, and her hand is hard on the back of Pansy's neck, a warning Pansy doesn't need and has no inclination to ignore. "I'm getting married again."

**

There are no guests at the civil partnership ceremony, despite the dozens of invitations Ginny has Pansy write by hand to former friends and family. No inmates are permitted to attend. There are flowers hastily scrounged up from the meagre garden tended by C block to win a bit of favour from the undisputed top dog, cheap new dress robes Pansy spent her entire savings on for them both, and a couple of guards to act as witnesses, hastily scribbling their names on the required paperwork and refusing to be in the photographs.

The Governor stands by the door, arms folded disapprovingly while the ceremony takes place. She leaves as soon as the Muggle registrar is led out in a state of confusion, and doesn't bother to congratulate the happy couple.

There are no members of the press present, but somehow the next morning the pictures are _everywhere_.

"You just lost any bit of public sympathy you had left," the Governor says when the guards have finished confiscating all the copies of the _Daily Prophet_ they can find. "I hope you're happy."

Even Pansy is unnerved by the way Ginny laughs at that.

**

They don't bother going out to the visiting room each month any more; there's no point. There's plenty they can do with the extra time in their cell.

"It was this one, wasn't it?" Pansy rubs the cloth over Ginny's right boot toe again and again, as if she can caress the foot underneath if she does it enough. Pansy has more types of boot polish than she even knew existed, but somehow she can never get the leather as perfectly shiny as she wants. Ginny doesn't take care of her boots, but she won't listen when Pansy tells her not to wear them in the shower, that the water damages them.

"Have you been researching my wicked past?" Ginny looks intrigued, in the quick glance she gives Pansy over the top of her newspaper. The Weasley-Granger wedding extravaganza is front page news, and Ginny has been staring at the picture for at least an hour. Pansy saw as much as she cared to in a brief look; Granger's hair is still a disaster area and everyone has stupid grins on their faces. "I wondered why you didn't ask."

"They said it was this one that struck his neck in the collision," Pansy says, and smirks. "The _accident_."

"They don't call it that any more," Ginny says, and although her tone is hard to read for certain, Pansy laughs. After all, it was Ginny herself who made sure of that. Those Slytherins who wouldn't speak to Pansy any more for taking up with a _Weasley_ , they must be sorry now. Here she was, Pansy Parkinson, married to the woman who had done what none of their sorry little Death Eater parents had been able to pull off.

"I don't really--" Pansy starts, but changes her mind. Ginny never takes well to being questioned.

"No, go on."

Ginny puts down her newspaper, which is a first, so Pansy takes the plunge.

"I just -- it seems such a weird way to choose to kill someone, I suppose," Pansy says, and really, it's only now striking her how weird the whole thing is. "How could you be sure of hitting him in just the right place, of your brooms colliding at the right angle for your boot to drive his neck against the ground that way?"

"It's easiest to show you," Ginny says, and pushes Pansy down to the floor. She swings her legs out away from the bunk and Pansy is still impressed by the athletic way she's up and over her in a split second. If only Pansy hadn't spent most of Ginny's professional Quidditch career inside, she might have enjoyed seeing her play.

But still, she can't see how this is going to answer her question. She's about to say so when the rough sole of Ginny's right boot settles against her neck.

"You love that, don't you?" Ginny says, her tone conversational. "You know one day I won't be able to resist. One day I'll have to do it."

"I don't... I don't care." Pansy's blood is pounding in her ears, a voice chanting over and over to the same beat urging _do it, do it, do it_. She knows Ginny knows it's there, has always known it.

"Oh, but you might." The boot presses down harder, and there's a sharp ridge digging into Pansy's ear, and too much pressure on her throat. The pain is a revelation, a slow motion replay of Potter's death, perhaps. "Would you still want it if Harry's death had been an accident?"

No hesitation. "Yes."

"Of course. It's still the sacred boot, after all." Ginny pauses, and laughs. "I can't believe you fell for that."

Pansy feels a chill run through her that has nothing to do with her face resting on the cold concrete floor. She tries to lift her head to see Ginny's face, but the boot only pushes her back down.

"They kept the boots I was wearing, stupid. You think they'd give them back to me?"

"They thought... they thought it was an accident." It's an effort for Pansy to speak, but she has to try. She knows, she knows, she _knows_ Ginny is lying.

"They _locked me in here_ ," Ginny spits out. "Not straightaway, of course. First they locked me up alone in a tiny underground cell for seven months while they investigated. They knew nobody would be satisfied that it was a freak accident so they made up this stupid negligence charge and slapped together a sentence that adds up to roughly six lifetimes just so they can look like they are doing something to avenge a man they didn't know and that I am _still grieving for_!"

"No," Pansy whispers, but Ginny can't seem to stop. "I have no idea what happened to them; maybe they'll end up in a museum one day. The weapons that killed the saviour of the Wizarding world."

"It's not true, not true," Pansy repeats under her breath, because it makes no sense. "Why would you say you murdered him if it was an accident? Why wear the boots all the time?"

"They picked the lie that made them happy." Ginny's voice is harsh, hard, only the hoarseness giving any clue to her state of mind. "But why should they have that when I've lost everything? Let them hate me, let them all hate me and regret they couldn't save him from me. And why should _you_ have the lie that makes you happy?"

"But the boots... why would you--"

"Oh, Pansy," Ginny says, and Pansy can hear the pity in her voice. She feels the boot lift briefly from her neck, but she has no illusion she's going to be getting up again. "My feet were cold."

**

It takes three weeks from Ginny's tearful confession to the Governor before the most senior members of the New Azkaban Judicial Committee deign to visit, but the wheels turn quickly after that. Much more quickly than they did for Ginny before, and she's grateful for that. Her cell is too quiet at night, and her fellow inmates far too willing to submit to interest her.

The shocking and almost daily updated headlines such as **POTTER KILLER NAMES ACCOMPLICE** and **LOVE TRIANGLE BEHIND POTTER MURDER?** probably help speed things along.

Her first glimpse of the latest arrival is one Tuesday morning. Ginny doesn't wear her boots to the shower room any more, but she still walks as if she's wearing them and everyone still gets out of her way. The women back away to the walls and go about their business when Ginny walks in, and there's a hush just waiting to be broken. The woman shuddering in a towel, her bushy hair in disarray and a purple bruise forming on her arm, doesn't speak, but she gives Ginny a look of such loathing that Ginny knows this is going to be _fun_.

"Move Granger's things to my cell," she instructs Lucinda, who scurries to obey.

"Over my dead body," Granger says, and Ginny barely has to flick a finger before two of the women have Granger by the arms.

"All in good time," Ginny says, smiling broadly for the first time in years. "All in good time."


End file.
